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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Nikola Hillebrand & Joseph Middleton

German soprano Nikola Hillebrand: British recital debut

Leeds Lieder Festival 2022, Nikola Hillebrand & Joseph Middleton, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, May 1

LEEDS Lieder Festival’s closing recital offered an unexpected surprise. In the absence of the advertised singer, we enjoyed the British recital debut of German soprano Nikola Hillebrand.

It was an occasion that none present will forget, enhanced by the presence of pianist Joseph Middleton on top form.

Hillebrand offered a heady mix of Schubert, Brahms and Strauss. She is the complete package, a lovely well-focused sound allied to charming presence and the ability to penetrate right to the heart of a song within a few bars, helped by a wide range of facial
expressions.

Conversely, she remains rooted to the spot and makes sparing use of hand gestures. Any
young singer considering a career in lieder would do well to emulate her technique in all these areas.

At the centre of her recital, right after the interval, she gave Strauss’s Mädchenblumen, Op 22, four settings of poetry by Felix Dahn, products of Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) which liken young ladies to a variety of flowers.

Although dedicated to a tenor, Hans Giessen, who was a member of Weimar Court Theatre with Strauss in the late 1880s, they work equally well with soprano. They are little heard because of their taxingly high tessitura, but in Hillebrand’s hands they were pure magic, seemingly posing no difficulties; she negotiated them so smoothly that the vocal lines carried a marvellous inevitability. Cornflowers, poppies, ivy, waterlily, she caressed them all playfully.

She had begun with a mixed bag of Schubert, warming up sensibly with ‘Der Vollmond Strahlt’ (The Full Moon Shines), the relatively low-lying Romanze from the incidental music to Rosamunde.

Two songs setting poets used only by once by Schubert made a nice contrast. Karoline Klenke’s ‘Heimliches Lieben’ (Secret Love) found her sharing a confidence, whereas in Anton Platner’s ‘Die Blumensprache’ (The Language Of Flowers), which is also about a type of secrecy, she twinkled with excitement.

The nostalgia of Goethe’s ‘Erster Verlust’ (First Loss) prepared the ground for his ‘Gretchen Am Spinnrade’ (Gretchen At The Spinning Wheel). Chestnut it may be, but it sounded anything but here, imbued with an anxious urgency and reaching two peaks of desperation, the second stronger than the first.

The refrain “Die männer sind méchant” (Men are rogues) – whose motto phrase is repeated at the end of each verse – ended this group wittily.

Love was a major feature of her Brahms songs, beginning very quietly with the last of Tieck’s 15 poems in the cycle Die Schöne Magelone, ‘Treue Liebe Dauert Lange’ (True Love Abides).

There was an even more enchanting pianissimo in the second verse of ‘Wiegenlied’ (Lullaby), another chestnut she polished anew. In between, she made a little drama from ‘Von Ewiger Liebe’ (Eternal Love) and was a forceful witch in ‘Salome’.

After the flower songs mentioned earlier, the remainder of her Strauss group steered a middle course through several favourites. By now we needed no reminder of her powers, but there were still some lovely moments from both performers. They kept ‘Ständchen’ (Serenade) extremely light, generating real ecstasy; after a broader second half, its climactic moment was their finest of the evening.

Following a moving ‘Allerseelen’ (All Souls’ Day), there was girlish glee in the pitter-patter of beating hearts (‘Schlagende Herzen’) and a beautifully controlled lullaby in Eichendorff’s ‘Meinem Kinde’ (To My Child).

They finished with John Henry Mackay’s ‘Morgen!’ (Tomorrow!), its pin-drop ending
conjured by immaculate control in Middleton’s pianissimo. A Britten arrangement of a Scottish folksong made the ideal encore, with Hillebrand standing to Middleton’s left to read the score; no-one minded in the least.

This was a highly auspicious debut, which must surely lead to many invitations to return to this country, including Leeds again, please.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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Witter on to a winner as Shed Seven play Doncaster Racecourse on Saturday night

Seven races and Shed Seven: Saturday evening’s double bill of the sport of kings and live music at Doncaster Racecourse

RICK Witter has never been to a racecourse, let alone fronted Shed Seven in a post-racing gig.

That changes on Saturday when the York band come under starter’s orders for a Live After Racing set at Doncaster Racecourse’s evening meeting.

“Weirdly, I’ve never been to York Races…though I have seen the fall-out afterwards! People dressed to the nines weaving their way back to the city-centre,” says Rick. 

“From memory, we’ve never done a racecourse gig, but it was literally as simple as Live At The Races, who put on these shows, asking us if we wanted to play Doncaster. They asked us in 2019, and it’s now third time lucky after what happened because of Covid.”

The Sheds suffered two false starts, first when their original August 2020 booking and then their rearranged May 2021 date had to be declared non-runners under the Government’s pandemic lockdown restrictions.

Rick cannot wait for Saturday’s kick-start to a summer diary full of outdoor Shed Seven performances. “The gates open at 2.45pm, the first race is at 5.15, the last one at 8.40, and we’ll be on at around 9.30, so everyone could be smashed by then! It looks like it’ll be a messy night!” he says.

The Sheds will be playing myriad festivals, seven in total, from Sign Of The Times at Hatfield to Kubix Festival at New Herrington; Tramlines in Sheffield to Belladrum Tartan Heart at Inverness; Camp Bestival in Dorset and Shropshire to Camper Calling in Alcester.

Where’s New Herrington, Rick? “It’s a good question! I’ve no idea, but I know I’ll get a ride there and sing some songs!” he says, as County Durham  awaits.

“We’re all over the country this summer. Every second year we tend to do our Shedcember tours, playing loads of shows in four of five weeks, but with festivals, you play over a weekend, have a few days to recover, then we’re ready for the next weekend.”

Not only festivals are in the Shed Seven diary for 2022. So too are recording sessions for the follow-up to their November 2017 “comeback” album, Instant Pleasures. “That one took us 16 years between albums [since 2001’s Truth Be Told], so if we could do the next one in six, we would be taking ten years off the gap,” says Rick.

“If we want to release it in September next year, everything has to be ready nine months before that these days, so we’ll have to crack on. We’ll be hammering away on that over the summer.

“We have four or five songs written already, so we’re getting towards halfway, and we’re working again with John Dawkins, who oversaw Instant Pleasures. Everything’s being put in place, but we probably won’t go abroad for the recording sessions this time. We’ll go to a residential British studio.”

Can Rick reveal any song titles yet? “The one that I’m enjoying the most is called Kissing California,” he says. “Weirdly, the lyrics I’m coming out with at the moment – and it must be subconscious – are about going somewhere, because for a while we couldn’t do that, could we, so Kissing California is a three-and-a-quarter-minute pop song spent travelling with the one you love.”

Shed Seven played three American concerts at the maximum high of their Britpop-era success, New York and San Francisco being among the locations, but the third one escaping Rick’s immediate recollection. “It’s a strange experience because you just go over there, just play the gig and move on to the next one, and that’s it,” he says.

“It looks like it’ll be a messy night!” says Rick Witter, centre, ahead of Shed Seven’s Live After Racing gig

“When we did go back, the record company flew us over just to photograph the artwork for Let It Ride in 1998, stopping off in Reno and Las Vegas and driving through Death Valley to film us, and giving us money to buy clothes. But no gigs! That wouldn’t happen now. They’d just photo-shop it!”

Thoughts turn back to racecourse gigs. If you are surprised that Shed Seven have never played their home-city track, Rick is even more so. “The fact that we b****y live here, it gets to the point, after so many years of not being asked, where you think, ‘is there any reason for it?’, ” he wonders. 

“But I would love to put a Shed Seven headline gig on the Knavesmire with loads of supporting acts, and that would take precedence now. We also need to play the new Community Stadium. It looks really good – and I’m following York City’s fortunes.”

Come Saturday, might the Sheds be tempted to do a cover version with a horse theme? Maybe The Byrds’ Chestnut Mare? Perhaps The Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses? Or how about the left-field screeching guitar rock of The Osmonds’ Crazy Horses?

“You might be on to something there! You could really make something of that Osmonds’ sound, but Wild Horses is beautiful, and Chestnut Mare is one of my favourite Byrds’ songs,” says Rick.

“Isn’t that the one about a man marrying his horse?” Well, Roger McGuinn’s lyric does say, “And we’ll be friends for life, she’ll be just like a wife”.

Anyway, back to The Osmonds. “At some point in the future, if we end up doing it, don’t come running for your ten per cent!” says Rick.

On a racing weekend when he will be chasing winners as much as Chasing Rainbows, he is already on a winning streak. “Did you watch it on Saturday night?” he asks? What? “I was on Pointless Celebrities.”

Did you win? “Yes we romped it at the end, me and Mark Morriss, from The Bluetones. We got the pointless score for charity. Mark picked three Jude Law films that got pointless scores as he’s a film buff…or he’s just some kind of mental case that stores information!” says Rick.

To book for Saturday, go to: doncaster-racecourse.co.uk/whats-on/music-live-featuring-shed-seven.

Copyright of The Press, York

An evening at the races: Shed Seven on course for Doncaster
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We’re All Doomed!…but not before Daniel Powell’s end-of-the-world tour hits York

Doomed: Comedian, writer, radio presenter and YouTube star Daniel Howell

DOOM’S day is booked for Friday, September 16 2022, when gloomy YouTube channel phenomenon Daniel Howell delivers his End Of The World Tour pronouncements at York Barbican.

Tickets for Howell’s darkly comic stage show We’re All Doomed! go on sale on the aptly apocalyptic, unlucky-for-some Friday the 13th from 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Who is Daniel Howell, you ask?  He has more than six million subscribers to his YouTube channel, and when announcing his comeback after a three-year hiatus, his accompanying video surpassed 1.5 million views in 24 hours.

We’re All Doomed! will find Howell “as stressed and depressingly dressed as ever” in a night of savage self-deprecation, soul-searching and over-sharing his deepest fears and desires, when he invites you to become part of a community of doomers sharing the final days as he “tours the world while it’s still here”.

The End Of The World is nigh but when? Take your pick on Daniel Howell’s tour

“When there’s so many apocalyptic scenarios threatening to destroy us, it might be tempting to give into the gloom,” his tour publicity machine spouts. “But with enough sarcasm, satire, and a desire to skewer everything that’s wrong with society, Daniel is determined to find some hope for humanity…or at least laugh like it’s the end of the world because it probably is.”

 Howell has expressed his outlook on life in books and an award-winning show on BBC Radio 1, while clocking up billions of views of his online content and performing high-concept comedy to 500,000 people in 18 countries.

He may make jokes at his own expense, but Howell has shared his serious struggles with his sexuality and mental health too, culminating in his Gay And Not Proud special and his chart-topping bestseller, You Will Get Through This Night, a no-nonsense guide to looking after your sanity, as well as being an ambassador for Stonewall and Young Minds.

Come September, We’re All Doomed! will “demand we honestly accept the fate of humanity with all the apocalypses threatening to consume us – and if we can’t find a reason to feel hopeful for the future, at least laugh like it’s the end of the world…because it probably is”. Even more so now than in the earlier sentence with exactly the same sentiment.

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Hayley Ria Christian is arriving on the Midnight Train To Georgia in her Gladys Knight show at Grand Opera House

Hayley Ria Christian: Climbing aboard her Midnight Train To Georgia as she celebrates the Empress of Soul, Gladys Knight

HAYLEY Ria Christian takes the Midnight Train To Georgia in A Celebration Of Gladys Knight at the Grand Opera House, York, on May 20.

“This production is definitely not a tribute, but a faithful portrayal that truly pays homage to the voice of a generation…the one and only…Empress of Soul…Ms Gladys Knight,” the tour… publicity…proclaims.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1944, Gladys Knight began singing with her siblings at the age of eight. The group opened for many R&B legends in the 1950s before heading to Motown.

In the company of The Pips, Knight notched R&B, soul and funk hits with Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me; Help Me Make It Through The Night; You’re The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me; Try To Remember/The Way We Were; So Sad The Song, Baby, Don’t Change Your Mind; Come Back And Finish What You Started and her 1976 signature song Midnight Train To Georgia.

Hayley Ria Christian’s production also features Part Time Love, Licence To Kill and That’s What Friends Are For.

In 1996, Gladys Knight & the Pips were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; in 2007, Knight received the Society of Singers’ ELLA Award in a ceremony where she was declared the Empress of Soul. Rolling Stone magazine names her in its list of the Greatest Singers of All Time.

Tickets for next Friday’s 7.30pm show are on sale on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York

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CBeebies’ star Maddie Moate to play Tinkerbell in York Theatre Royal pantomime All New Adventures Of Peter Pan

Maddie Moate: CBeebies presenter, YouTube channel host and York Theatre Royal pantomime star

CBEEBIES’ favourite Maddie Moate is the first signing for this winter’s York Theatre Royal pantomime, All New Adventures Of Peter Pan.

Award-winning television presenter and You Tuber Maddie will be starring as feisty favourite Tinkerbell in creative director Juliet Forster’s production from December 2 2022 to January 2 2023.

Further casting will be announced in the coming months for the Theatre Royal’s third pantomime in partnership with Evolution Productions, after 2020’s Travelling Pantomime and last winter’s Cinderella, a show that featured another CBeebies’ star, Andy Day, and was nominated for Best Pantomime (500-900 seat category) at the UK Pantomime Association’s Pantomime Awards.

Maddie has presented the BBC’s CBeebies series Do You Know? since 2016, exploring the secret workings of everyday objects and winning the 2017 Best Presenter category at the BAFTA Children’s Awards to boot.

In addition, she has starred in the CBeebies Proms Live at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and multiple CBeebies Christmas Shows and presented the CBeebies Ballet. Elsewhere, she has hosted CBBC’s Show Me Honey, the BBC’s Springwatch Academy and CNBC’s The Cloud Challenge.

Maddie Moate: Making her York Theatre Royal debut as Tinkerbell in All New Adventures Of Peter Pan

Maddie has her own science and technology You Tube channel, wherein she takes her worldwide family audience on educational adventures and inspires them to “stay curious”. Latterly, her channel has been home to Let’s Go Live! With Maddie And Greg, her daily science show for families.

She presents and makes films for educational You Tube channels, including Fully Charged, focusing on electric vehicles and future energy, and BBC Earth’s Unplugged, where she investigates the quirks of our planet. She also appears on stage in her live science and wildlife shows for families and children.

Maddie is a patron of the Youth Stem Awards (YSA) and an ambassador for Eureka, the National Children’s Museum, in Halifax.

Welcoming Maddie to the Theatre Royal pantomime, director Juliet Forster says: “I’m delighted to be working with such a talented and much-loved CBeebies presenter. I know she will bring plenty of magic to our pantomime.”

Tickets are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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Badapple Theatre are back at York Theatre Royal after a decade tonight with the haunted dance hall comedy Elephant Rock

Haunted happenings: Jessica Woodward, left, Robert Wade and Stephanie Hutchinson in Badapple Theatre Company’s Elephant Rock

GREEN Hammerton theatre-on-your-doorstep purveyors Badapple Theatre Company return to York Theatre Royal for the first time in a decade tonight (10/5/2022).

At the invitation of TakeOver 2022, the arts festival run by York St John University, Kate Bramley’s travelling troupe will be presenting Elephant Rock, a “lighthearted comedy about finding your place in the world” set against the backdrop of environmental change.

“We were last at the Theatre Royal with Back To The Land Girls roughly ten years ago and it feels very exciting to be back. We’re delighted,” says writer-director Kate. “It’s come about through the York St John performing arts students, who, as part of their final-year work, have the chance to put together a week of performances in a festival.

“They came to us and asked if we could do Elephant Rock, so we juggled things around a bit on the tour, and here we are, on the main stage, which is lovely for us, having the chance to use more than the five lanterns we take on tour for the lighting!”

Badapple Theatre Company artistic director Kate Bramley: Delighted to be returning to York Theatre Royal

Set in a storm-battered seaside village, Kate’s upbeat play with original music and songs by Jez Lowe follows the fortunes of a family trying desperately to keep the struggling pier-front Palace Theatre open, come hell or high water.

“The heyday of the great British seaside holiday may have gone but the memories remain,” says Kate. “So too does the old Palace Theatre, once perched proudly on the pier in sight of the mighty Elephant Rock, and boasting its own fabulous attraction, The Amazing Mechanical Elephant.

“But the relentless tides have chipped away at the coast, and Elephant Rock and its mechanical counterpart are long gone, as if instinct and longing have lured them off to the land of their ancestors.

“Amid the comic yet heartfelt attempts of the mismatched team who are determined that the Palace doors stay open, they discover a surprising family history that stretches across a hundred years and five thousand miles, from the rocky coast of England to the sweeping grasslands of Sri Lanka.”

Jessica Woodward: Pink dress, pink umbrella, in Catherine Dawn’s typically colourful design for Elephant Rock

Elephant Rock’s subject matter was prompted by a family visit to Withernsea, the East Riding resort noted for its Pier Towers, sandy beach, Valley Gardens and lighthouse. “A few years back, we were staying there, and where there used to be a road, now there was just a drop with a sign saying ‘End’,” says Kate.

“It was partly that observation that set me thinking about erosion, and we’d also heard the story of the Elephant Rock, just off the coast at Hartlepool, standing there for many years and then ‘wandering off’, disappearing into the sea – though we’ve had sightings of ‘Elephant Rocks’ elsewhere: one was in Iceland and another off the Vietnamese coast.

“It seems to be a phenomenon to do with coastal erosion that leaves rock in the shape of an animal.”

While the Elephant Rock story was a “bit of trivia”, Kate noted how coastal communities were being hit by climate change and the impact of erosion. “I thought about how people need to move and migrate, and I wondered whether people had to come from a place to call it ‘home’, when the coast plays host to a fluctuating community, such as carnival troupes that come and go.”

Entertainment on the pier: Robert Wade and Stephanie Hutchinson in the vintage dance hall in Elephant Rock

Elephant Rock is set in the present day while harking back to the past. “The three principal characters are stuck in a dance hall where these comedic hauntings happen to them as they try to decide what to do with a magical box,” explains Kate.

Those roles and no doubt more besides are played by Jessica Woodward, Robert Wade and Stephanie Hutchinson. “They’re a lovely bunch, all Yorkshire actors – quite by chance it’s fallen that way – and they’re having a lovely time together on what is our ‘comeback tour’ to full-scale touring after these past two years. Thankfully all these venues have stayed loyal to us,” says Kate.

“Robert worked with us in The Carlton Colliers and The Last Station Keeper before we lost him to Northern Broadsides and the West End, but now we’ve tempted him back to the north!

“Jess graduated from ALRA [Academy of Live and Recorded Arts] a couple of years ago and this is her first long tour. She’s a whiz, a classic ALRA all-rounder. Stephanie is a lovely actor from Leeds, who’s done some rural touring and telly and does the bulk of the singing in the show.”

Look out for new compositions by Jez Lowe that are set within the action of the play, recounting what happened to Elephant Rock, and he has delivered some fun Fifties’ jive numbers too.

Stephanie Hutchinson: Making her Badapple Theatre Company debut

Kate has been delighted at the response to the show that opened on April 22 and will be on the road until June 19 in Badapple’s 24th year of touring original productions with professional actors to the “most unexpected of places”: the smallest and hardest-to-reach rural venues and village halls in Yorkshire and beyond.

“It seems people are resting more easily around the Covid situation, and it feels like a transitional show, reminding people that they can go out,” she says. “We’ve had people saying ‘I’ve really missed it’ – and that is our role, to go out there on rural tours, bringing joy to communities.

“There’s still some generation caution about going out, with older people proving to be more cautious, but that said, equally some people feel far safer going to their village hall than going into town to see a show.”

Should you miss tonight’s 7.30pm show, Badapple’s spring and summer tour has plenty more performances in the York vicinity: May 17, Green Hammerton Village Hall (box office, 01423 331304); May 18, Terrington Village Hall, 8pm (01653 648394); May 20, Sutton upon Derwent Village Hall (01904 608524); June 10, Low Catton Village Hall (07837 330421); June 12, Skipsea Village Hall (01262 469714), and June 15, Galtres Centre, Easingwold (01347 822472, Monday to Friday, 9am, to 5pm). Shows start at 7.30pm unless stated otherwise.

Tickets for tonight and all the TakeOver 2022 festival events are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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York Theatre Royal Studio season promises queer history, a potato Faustus, a gaming romcom and Woolf’s talk on feminism

York puppeteer and performer Freddie Hayes’s Potatohead: “A starch-raving mad adaptation of Faustus with puppets”. Picture: Sophie Jouvenaar

YORK Theatre Royal’s Studio season will read the Riot Act on June 9 in a show created and performed by Alexis Gregory as part of a Pride Season tour.

Fresh from his success in Sex/Crime at London’s Soho Theatre, Gregory is directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair in his journey through six decades of queer history, told by those who helped to shape it from Gregory’s interviews with a survivor of the Stonewall Riots, a radical drag queen and an AIDS activist.

Ahead of her Edinburgh Fringe run, York puppeteer, performer and writer Freddie Hayes presents Potatohead, her humorously bizarre solo adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus And The Seven Deadly Sins, on June 10.

Directed by Sh!t Theatre, Potatohead is saturated with potato puns from start to finish as Hayes tells the story of a humble spud who dreams of becoming a cabaret superstar.

Elements of kitsch cabaret and old-school entertainment characterise Hayes’s “one-potato show” show that blends puppetry, clowning and comedy in an unadulterated celebration of silliness. Expect sexual content and references to religion and the devil, hence the age guidance of 14+.

Hayes’s debut UK tour of her hour-long “starch-raving mad adaptation of Faustus with puppets” takes in a further North Yorkshire date in The McCarthy at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on June 14 at 7.45pm (box office, 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com).

Happy Meal, Tabby Lamb’s joyful queer romcom directed by Blythe Stewart, will be staged by Tadcaster’s Roots and Theatre Royal Plymouth from August 30 to September 3.

What’s the story? Bette, a teenager who knows her Neil Diamond, is into gaming alone, whereas Alec likes Swedish goth rock and multiplayer gaming. In the real world, they would never meet, but online these unlikely best friends can be everything they wanted to be.

Dyad Productions return to the Theatre Royal on October 6 and 7 to present A Room Of One’s Own, a wry, amusing and incisive trip through the history of literature, feminism and gender with a “21st century take on Virginia Woolf’s celebrated pre-TED talk”.

Tickets for these 7.45pm performances are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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York Theatre Royal Studio season takes in queer history, a potato Dr Faustus, an online gaming romcom and Woolf feminism

YORK Theatre Royal’s Studio season will read the Riot Act on June 9 in a show created and performed by Alexis Gregory as part of a Pride Season tour.

Fresh from his success in Sex/Crime at London’s Soho Theatre, Gregory is directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair in his journey through six decades of queer history, told by those who helped to shape it from Gregory’s interviews with a survivor of the Stonewall Riots, a radical drag queen and an AIDS activist.

Ahead of her Edinburgh Fringe run, York puppeteer, performer and writer Freddie Hayes presents Potatohead, her humorously bizarre solo adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus And The Seven Deadly Sins, on June 10.

Directed by Sh!t Theatre, Potatohead is saturated with potato puns from start to finish as Hayes tells the story of a humble spud who dreams of becoming a cabaret superstar.

Elements of kitsch cabaret and old-school entertainment characterise a show that blends puppetry, clowning and comedy in an unadulterated celebration of silliness. Expect sexual content and references to religion and the devil, hence the age guidance of 14+.

Hayes’s debut UK theatre tour of her one-potato show has a further North Yorkshire performance on June 14 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough (box office, 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com).

Happy Meal, Tabby Lamb’s joyful queer romcom directed by Blythe Stewart, will be staged by Tadcaster’s Roots and Theatre Royal Plymouth from August 30 to September 3.

What’s the story? Bette, a teenager who knows her Neil Diamond, is into gaming alone, whereas Alec likes Swedish goth rock and multiplayer gaming. In the real world, they would never meet, but online these unlikely best friends can be everything they wanted to be.

Dyad Productions return to the Theatre Royal on October 6 and 7 to present A Room Of One’s Own, a wry, amusing and incisive trip through the history of literature, feminism and gender with a “21st century take on Virginia Woolf’s celebrated pre-TED talk”.

Tickets for these 7.45pm performances are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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More Things To Do in and around York, from B-movie art attacks to silent Indian cinema. List No. 81, courtesy of The Press, York

Swapping New York for York: King Kong clambers onto York Minster in Lincoln Lightfoot’s exhibition, Revelation, at Fossgate Social and Micklegate Social

AS not only tourists and stag and hen parties invade York, but so do UFOs, dinosaurs, even King Kong, Charles Hutchinson plots an escape route to other delights.

Exhibition launch of the week: Lincoln Lightfoot’s Revelation, Micklegate Social and Fossgate Social, York, today until July 7

SOUTH Bank surrealist Lincoln Lightfoot is letting his gloriously ridiculous B-movie nightmares loose on unsuspecting York at the Micklegate Social and Fossgate Social cafe bars from this weekend.

For two months, past meets present and a forewarned future both in retro art style and subject matter in Revelation, his humorously absurdist depictions of surreal encounters with beasts and creatures as they take over landmark locations.

On show in Micklegate Social from this evening’s 6pm to 10pm launch will be the first release of Lincoln’s larger, compelling paintings, 150 by 100cm in size, complemented by giclee prints of those new works at Fossgate Social. All works are for sale.

Spiffing chaps Morgan & West in Unbelievable Science at York Theatre Royal

Here comes the science bit: Morgan & West in Unbelievable Science, York Theatre Royal, today, 2pm

GREAT Yorkshire Fringe festival favourites Morgan & West return to York to present their new show Unbelievable Science, full of captivating chemistry, phenomenal physics and bonkers biology.

Spiffing chaps Rhys Morgan and Robert West combine their trademark showmanship and silliness from their decade of magic shows with genuine scientific knowledge and a lifelong love of learning to create a fun science extravaganza for all ages.

Fires, explosions, lightning on stage, optical illusions, mass audience experiments and 3D shadow puppets await all those “wily enough to come along to be intrigued by science”. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Howzat for cricket stories: Test Match Special chat with Tuffers & Agnew at York Barbican

Not just cricket: Test Match Special Live with Agnew & Tuffers, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm

PHIL Tufnell and BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew take you inside the Beeb’s famous TMS commentary box to share memories from their playing careers and beyond the boundary.

What was it like facing Shane Warne in his prime? Which member of the TMS team never buys dinner? What really happened the night after the 2005 Ashes triumph? Enjoy never-before-seen footage of iconic commentary moments and discover what life is really like watching England from the finest seat in the house. Special guest will be TMS statistics guru and BBC Radio 4 comedy presenter Andy Zaltzman. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Badapple Theatre’s Jess Woodward, Robert Wade and Stephanie Hutchinson in Elephant Rock, part of the TakeOver festival at York Theatre Royal

Festival of the week: TakeOver, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday

THIS week-long arts festival is organised and run entirely by final-year York St John University students. Unveiling hidden worlds of the unspoken to curious minds of any age, the event combines local and personal stories with an exploration of the wider world through a combination of theatre, memory and art.

Among those taking part will be Green Hammerton company Badapple Theatre performing artistic director Kate Bramley’s Elephant Rock on Tuesday at 7.30pm in their first Theatre Royal visit in a decade. For the full programme, go to yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Seeta Devi, one of the early stars of Indian silent cinema, in the role of Sunita in A Throw Dice

Film event of the week: Yorkshire Silent Film Festival presents A Throw Of Dice (PG), National Centre for Early Music, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm

A THROW Of Dice, an Indian box-office hit from 1929, rivals Cecil B De Mille for screen spectacle in its lavishly romantic story of rival Indian kings – one good, one bad – who fall in love with the same woman.

Based on an episode from The Mahabarata and filmed in India with 10,000 extras, 1,000 horses, 50 elephants and an all-Indian cast, this silent classic will be accompanied by a live score, improvised by Indian pianist Utsav Lal. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

Karen Ilsley, as Dorothy Nettle, and Stuart Leeming, as Jefferson Steel, in rehearsal for the Stockton Foresters’ production of A Bunch Of Amateurs

Play of the week: The Stockton Foresters in A Bunch Of Amateurs, Stockton on the Forest Village Hall, near York, May 12 to 14, 7.30pm

THE Stockton Foresters’ first full-scale production post-lockdown is Ian Hislop and Nick Newman’s A Bunch Of Amateurs, the story of an amateur dramatic group’s determination to overcome all odds to stave off closure.

Written by two of the original Spitting Image writers, this fast-paced, sharp-edged comedy is performed frequently on the amateur circuit, on this occasion by Louisa Littler’s cast of Stuart Leeming, Karen Ilsley, Holly Smith, Russell Dowson, Jane Palmer, Peter Keen and Lynne Edwards. Box office: 01904 400583.

Shed Seven: Chasing winners and Chasing Rainbows at Doncaster Racecourse

Outdoor gig of the week: Shed Seven, Doncaster Racecourse Live After Racing, May 14

SHED Seven’s live-after-racing gig at Doncaster Racecourse will come under starter’s orders for a third time next Saturday after two false starts.

The York band’s outdoor Donny debut had to be scrapped twice, first booked for August 15 2020, then May 15 last spring, but each show was declared a non-runner under the Government’s pandemic lockdown restrictions.

To book, go to: doncaster-racecourse.co.uk/whats-on/music-live-featuring-shed-seven.

Sara Pascoe: Success Story tour will visit York and Harrogate

Tour announcement of the week: Sara Pascoe, Success Story, York Barbican, November 24; Harrogate Royal Hall, April 21 2023

AFTER contemplating the positive aspects of self-imposed celibacy in LadsLadsLads, Success Story finds comedian Sara Pascoe, a few years later, happily married with a beautiful baby son.

In her new show, she will examine what it is to be successful, how we define it and how it feels when what we want eludes us. Expect jokes about status, celebrities, plus Sara’s new fancy lifestyle versus infertility, her multiple therapists and career failures. Box office: York, yorkbarbican.co.uk; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.

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REVIEW: Fatal Attraction, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday ***

That clinches it: Susie Amy’s Alex Forrest and Oliver Farnwoth’s Dan Gallagher in Fatal Attraction. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Fatal Attraction, by James Dearden, Grand Opera House, York, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm, 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets/York

JAMES Dearden revisits his script for Adrian Lyne’s “bunny boiler” movie, the Paramount Pictures psychological thriller where it was fatal to get too close to Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest.

Dearden does not merely plonk it on stage. Instead, he moves it forward from 1987 to today’s world of #MeToo, greater awareness of mental health, all-pervasive technology (constantly name-checked to prove the point), but where men’s entitled behaviour has not changed.

He tells the same story with better balance but, frustratingly, not better dialogue in climactic scenes, brought to stage life with directorial swagger by Loveday Ingram, an outstanding, hi-tech set design by Morgan Large and projections by Mogzi.

Then add the box-office magnet of a celebrity cast of a Footballers’ Wives goddess (Susie Amy), a soap star (Oliver Farnworth, from Coronation Street and Hollyoaks) and a girl group favourite and Strictly runner-up (Eternal’s Louise Redknapp), each assuming a generic American accent that largely stays that side of the Pond.

They are not playing to big houses, suggesting Fatal Attraction may have lost its sex-sells allure since 1987 or lacks sufficient curiosity value in its transfer to the stage, or has been consigned to the past like so many DVDs and videos at a car boot sale.

Nevertheless, Dearden, Ingram, the production team and cast, sound designer Carolyn Downing and composer Paul Englishby have committed wholly to justifying its return. Dearden even comes up with a Sliding Doors coda, a little awkwardly delivered but worth it all the same.

If Fatal Attraction has slipped from memory or never been a Close encounter of the psycho kind for you, here is a quick refresher course. Farnworth’s Dan Gallagher – a happily married New York attorney with a daughter (unseen, voiced by Charlotte Holden) – narrates the torrid tale of his two-night stand with Amy’s Alex Forrest, the mysterious woman at the basement bar he “befriends”.

Wife Beth (Redknapp) is away in the country for the weekend, and as the drinks clink, the strangers click, Downing’s sound design pounds away, and soon Dan and Alex are too, with every last theatre light turned off. Sound and vision work to best effect here.

Dan might think everything can be washed away with a change of shirt, the fling flung, the dirty deed done, but Alex has other ideas. If there are rules, you play by hers, and here is a woman scorned. A woman, too, whose carapace of confidence in the bar turns out to be fragile, a front to cover loneliness.

Louise Redknapp’s Beth Gallagher in Fatal Attraction. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Alex still goes down the bunny boiler path, but Dearden refracts her actions through the prism of our better understanding of mental illness, and the assured Amy has switched impressively from playing Beth in the tour’s first leg to bringing a more rounded humanity to the deeply troubled Alex, her more considered interpretation having none of the Hollywood histrionics of Close.

Farnworth never quite shakes off being an Englishman playing a New York American, but he captures the oily charm but nonchalant arrogance and misogynism of the smart but outsmarted lawyer.

Who is the victim here? Mentally wounded, self-harming, jilted Alex? Dan, who took a chance that backfired? Or Redknapp’s wronged wife, Beth, who had given up her better-paid job to dedicate herself to husband, child and nest-building, making pasta sauce for Dan before heading up country?

The answer is all three in Dearden’s 2022 version, although he has written the cut-and-thrust scenes for Alex and Dan rather better than those for Dan and demure Beth, especially the far-too-rushed confession and confrontation over his infidelity.

Heat and tension, and later exhaustion, rise from Alex and Dan’s encounters. By contrast, Beth’s hurt is under-powered, unconvincingly reduced to being too reliant on a few expletives as if one eye were on the running time. She deserved better, not just in her husband, but in that let-down of a melodramatic climactic scene.

Put that one down to Dearden but Ingram’s direction errs in the tone of the bunny boiler set-piece, set up deliciously, even with a hint of knowing mischief, only to go off the boil and fizzle out into unintentional comedy. Not for the only time, the pacing is not right – even in the tour’s last week – and momentum is stalled.

Consistently excellent, however, is Large’s set design, one that enables a slick transfer of locations through a fusion of multiple screens and a box-of-tricks structure that allows for furniture to emerge, entrances to be created. Then call on Mogzi’s projections to conjure all manner of imagery, internal, external, urban and upstate, most spectacularly a speeding car heading out of control.

To further emphasise the 21st century refurb, mobile phonecalls and video calls are relayed on those screens too. The overall effect of this deliberate visual overload is to mess around with your head, just as Dan and Alex are doing to each other, all the while blurring and twisting reality beyond Dan’s narrative control.

Fatal Attraction, the stage play, is the proverbial curate’s egg: direction hit and miss; design top drawer; performances enjoyable; the writing alive to a changed world but sometimes misfiring, not least an overworked “Tired of London/Tired of New York” simile.

Yet everything ultimately boils down to whether it works as a psychological thriller, one that gets you both hot and bothered, shocks and surprises you, and while it comes within a knife’s length of doing so, in the big moments, the ones that really matter, it falls tantalisingly short.